I love Melbourne.
Maybe it seemed even better after my disastrous Great Ocean Road trip, but Melbourne has just about everything I could ever want. It does have a distinct lack of wildlife but that's to be expected of a city so I'll let it off.
I'd decided to stay in St Kilda, a trendy suburb by the beach, as I was going to be here a week and I knew I'd spend too much money in the city. As it turns out I probably ended up spending more in St Kilda due to its array or amazing cake shops. So much for the weight I lost up the east coast.
St Kilda immediately struck me as being quite similar to Brighton, but with much much better weather. The beachside road even has the same name - Marine Parade. There's little streets with cool shops, amazing cafes and a mini theme park by the beach.
They hold 'Meet the Stars' (of Neighbours) nights every Monday night, which believe it or not, are pretty busy every night. What I didn't realise though, is that they alternate which 'stars' appear every week. I thought I was going to see Karl Kennedy, Toadfish and, of course, Harold Bishop but instead I got Lynn Scully, Connor and Paul Robinson. I haven't really watched Neighbours in ages and was never a big fan of the Scullys, but seeing Paul Robinson was pretty funny since he was in it back in the days I was a fan. There was a quiz as well - general knowledge with some Neighbours related questions thrown in (which no one seemed to know the answers to!) - so we formed a little team, called ourselves the Worzels (not my choice) and ended up coming 3rd out of 43 teams. We did have a big argument over what colour Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh is though. I swore he was blue, the guys said he was grey, I was overruled and we never did find out what the 'correct' anwer was. It's been bugging me ever since.
I also decided to go see Karl Kennedy's band the next night, since it was Valentines Day and Simon was in NZ and I had nothing else to do. I think they're called the Waiting Room or something. They weren't bad. It was a bit surreal seeing him singing and having loads of girls fall at his feet but it was pretty entertaining. The best bit being when they got an English guy onstage who thought he'd be singing Wonderwall with them, and half way through they switched to Blister In The Sun, and this guy had no idea what it was. Disgraceful.
The rest of the time I pretty much walked round the city, went to the museum - very unlike me but I managed to wangle a discount - went up the Rialto Tower which gives you great views all over the city and stumbled across this amazing 'festival' in Federation Square. It was called the Sustainable Living festival and was rows of tents with info on solar powered stuff, Greenpeace, vegan food and this weird healing place where they remove your bad karma and negative engergies you've obtained from eating bad foods with preservatives and msg in it. Apparently. So they offered me a free healing session and I thought I may as well try it. After 10 minutes of whatever they did (I had my eyes shut so I'm not sure) I felt...exactly the same. They offered to 'give me some more light' but I politely declined and left wondering what the hell that was all about.
I'd been wanting to go to one of the outdoor cinemas since I'd been in Oz so decided to go see Harry Potter. It's a bit of a rip off really - the ticket prices are about the same as a normal cinema but they charge you $6 to rent a bean bag, so I didn't bother. Everyone else seemed to have come prepared for some major diaster, with picnic hampers full of food, and pillows and blankets - the works. I ended up being pretty damn cold, sat on the ground with nothing but the clothes I was wearing and pretty hungry with my tiny bag of free maltesers while everyone else was enjoying a feast.
There were loads of bats flying over us the whole time the film was on though, which was quite appropriate given the film, but I did keep wondering if they were going to shit on someone.
On my last day I succumbed to doing a Neighbours tour so I could see Ramsay St. I wasn't going to bother but I didn't want to regret not having done it. It probably wasn't worth it - they just take you to 'Erinsborough High' which is actually a proper school so you can't go inside it. It's used to teach English to foreign students so they probably wonder why the hell there are always tourists there.
Then we drove past the studios which you can't see cos they're behind a fence, and onto Ramsay St which is way smaller than it looks. People actually live in most of the houses so you can loiter outside the driveway but thats it. A British couple have just moved into one of them - how sad.
But my highlight from my Melbourne days was my trip to Phillip Island. There are hundreds of little penguins (about 30cm tall) who wander into shore every night after a days fishing and you can sit by the shore and watch them, its pretty amazing. Especially given my recently new found love for penguins. You're not allowed to take pictures cos they're photosensitive but you can buy some pretty good postcards. A couple of stupid people decided they were going to try and take photos and got kicked out by the rather scary looking ranger. They form little groups when they come into shore and then waddle up the beach towards home. Some of them get so close you can almost touch them - unless you fear the ranger's wrath. Some of them had eaten so much fish they could barely make it up the beach cos they were so fat and I felt so sorry for them as everyone was laughing at them as they fell over on their tummies. It reminded me of always coming last in sports day. Poor penguins.
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